New Intelligent Awareness program to improve navigational safety

A new situational awareness system has been launched, aiming to reduce the risks of navigation during night, in bad weather on congested waterways. To do this, the system uses sensors with intelligent software.

Intelligent Awareness (IA) is undoubtedly one of the most significant advances made to-date in terms of ship navigation safety. It provides bridge personnel with a much greater understanding of the ship’s surroundings.

IA collects data from multiple sources and provides an overview of the vessel situation, in four User Interface modes; Virtual Reality (2D and 3D), Augmented Reality and Precision mode.

Stena, MOL and Rolls-Royce have also developed a program which creates a 3D map of a vessel based on Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR). This program uses light to measure distances, and it can be linked to GPS data to create 3D illustrations.

An IA system will be installed onboard the 165m passenger ferry Sunflower, which MOL operates between Kobe and Oita, Japan.